Government Corruption

A nonprofit run by state lawmakers to raise scholarship money for needy minority students spends most of the cash on its lavish annual soiree — including $6,000 on limos — and gave out no grants the last two years, The Post has learned.

The New York State Association of Black and Puerto Rican Legislators organizes a “Caucus Weekend” — a series of workshops, concerts and parties — in Albany every February for minority members of the Assembly and the Senate.

The group charges sponsors up to $50,000 for a chance to party with lawmakers at events that have ­included Grammy Award-winning rappers and high-profile speakers such as Hillary Clinton and Jesse Jackson.

The Presidents Day weekend bash is capped off with a swanky black-tie Scholarship Gala where participants are reminded that they are “changing lives, one scholarship at a time,” according to the group’s Web site and literature.

But in the last two years there has been no cash for scholarships, according to two sources — a former lawmaker, and a community organizer who has relied on the money for needy students since just after the group was founded in 1985.

Federal tax filings confirm that in the 2015-16 fiscal year, which ended Sept. 30, 2016, the group gave out no educational grants — despite raking in contributions totaling more than $500,000.

“I don’t know what happened,” said Assemblyman Gary Pretlow, a Westchester Democrat and the longtime treasurer for the group. “I just sign the checks they give me to sign.”

While students went without scholarships, the lawmakers at Caucus Weekend 2016 spent $128,000 on “food service,” $36,500 on music and $56,494 on “equipment rental.”

The group failed to furnish The Post with the subsequent year’s tax filings — October 2016 to September 2017 — despite a federal law requiring it to do so.

The group had its charitable status temporarily revoked in 2011 by the IRS after it failed to file tax returns for three consecutive years, according to federal tax documents.

When asked why the group had not given out any money to students in either year — even though scholarships are the heart of its stated mission — the lawmakers who manage the nonprofit refused to answer. The group is chaired by a president who serves a two-year term.

Assemblywoman Latrice Walker, a Brooklyn Democrat, the current chair of the nonprofit’s board, who is campaigning to be the city’s public advocate, said through a spokesman that she “does not have any knowledge of the matter.”

State Sen. Leroy Comrie, a Queens Democrat and second-ranking board executive, did not return phone calls and e-mails, and would not emerge from his St. Albans district office when a Post reporter visited Friday. Queens Assemblywoman Michele Titus, a Democrat and the former chairwoman in 2015-16, did not return messages seeking comment.

Other board members, including former state Comptroller Carl McCall, did not return The Post’s calls. None would provide a copy of their latest tax filings.

“Money comes from the events and we have a lot of bills associated with the events,” Pretlow said.

In the 2014-15 fiscal year ending Sept. 30, 2015, the group spent $157,926 on “food service,” $6,332 on limousines and $30,657 on “event decor,” according to tax filings. It also spent $3,000 on the Sunday preacher.

Of the $564,677 the group received in contributions that year, only $35,745 went to scholarships, a little more than 6.3 percent of total revenue.

Charity watchdog groups such as Charity Navigator recommend that at least a third of a nonprofit’s revenues go to its stated purpose.

In the previous fiscal year, 2013-14, the group doled out $32,000 in scholarships out of total contributions of $580,190, tax filings show.

The nonprofit charges sponsors like unions, lobbying firms and corporations up to $50,000 for a “Platinum Package” which includes tickets to workshops on expanding access to government contracts for minority and women-owned businesses, on gun ­violence, and parties where participants can rub elbows with lawmakers and “ a large community of advocates.”

The weekend is considered a can’t-miss date on the Albany political calendar.

Past weekends have included an exclusive screening of “Black Panther” and an after-party concert by Doug E. Fresh and Slick Rick, or Grammy-winning rapper Big Daddy Kane. Speakers have included Gov. Cuomo, Mayor de Blasio, former US Ambassador Andrew Young and TV host and medical-marijuana advocate Montel Williams.

Your Government waste billions every year on failed companies and no one is held accountable.

Senate Democrats have shown their willingness to shut down the government in lieu of spending nearly $6 billion on a border wall, but compare that price tag to some of the other expenditures the government funds.

House Republicans passed a stopgap funding bill on Thursday that included $5.7 billion to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. However, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer vowed to kill any funding measure appropriating for a wall’s construction.

Schumer has referred to the wall as “expensive and ineffective,” but just how expensive is it relative to recent expenditures?

The Environmental and Protection Agency (EPA) was appropriated a $5.7 billion budget in 2018, down from the roughly $8 billion annual budget it has received since the mid-1990s. Inline with the agency’s mission statement, nearly 90 percent of the budget is used to provide grants safeguarding clear air, land and water, according to National Geographic.

A Government Accountability Office report uncovered that while the EPA’s budget has been remaining relatively stable, the amount of employees on the public relations staff has been spiking. In less than a decade, the agency increased its public relations staff by 16 percent with more than 140 employees dedicated to pushing the EPA’s message.

The government also footed the bill for nearly half of the country’s most expensive infrastructure project, which was concentrated in one city alone. After the ‘Big Dig’, a megaproject that rerouted Boston’s primary thoroughfare, was plagued by financial mismanagement and design flaws, the Federal Highway Administration stepped in and provided what amounted to about $7 billion in grants, reported The Boston Globe.

The project was completed in 2010 with a total ticket price of $15 billion.

And while the federal government has spent billions of dollars on one city’s project, it has also spent billions of dollars on individual companies.

According to a 2014 Special Inspector General report, American taxpayers took an $11.2 billion loss on its bailout of General Motors (GM). After the automaker declared bankruptcy in 2009, the government invested $49.5 billion in the company with a 61 percent equity share. Overtime, GM’s stock price dropped, and despite selling back shares, the U.S. government took billion dollar losses.

While a 2017 internal report from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) forecasts that a wall would ultimately cost approximately $21.6 billion to complete, the Federation For American Immigration Reform (FAIR) estimates that the fiscal burden of illegal immigration on the American taxpayers is approximately $115.8 billion annually.

“We would save Billions of Dollars if the Democrats would give us the votes to build the Wall,” Trump tweeted in early December. “Either way, people will NOT be allowed into our Country illegally! We will close the entire Southern Border if necessary. Also, STOP THE DRUGS!”

After eight years, two investigations and the intervention of a congressman, Maj. Matthew Golsteyn is being charged with murder in the death of an Afghan man during a 2010 deployment.

Golsteyn’s commander “has determined that sufficient evidence exists to warrant the preferral of charges against him,” U.S. Army Special Operations Command spokesman Lt. Col. Loren Bymer told Army Times in a brief email statement Thursday.

“Major Golsteyn is being charged with the murder of an Afghan male during his 2010 deployment to Afghanistan,” Bymer wrote.

The major’s attorney, Phillip Stackhouse, told Army Times that he and his client learned of the charges on Thursday as well, and that the murder charge carries with it the possibility of a death penalty.

Stackhouse called his client a “humble servant-leader who saved countless lives, both American and Afghan, and has been recognized repeatedly for his valorous actions.”

Bymer confirmed that Golsteyn has been recalled to active duty and is under the command of the USASOC headquarters company. An intermediary commander will review the warrant of preferred charges to determine if the major will face an Article 32 hearing that could lead to a court-martial.

That commander has 120 days to make that decision.

Golsteyn had been placed on voluntary excess leave, an administrative status for soldiers pending lengthy administrative proceedings, Bymer said. He is not being confined at this time.

The path to these charges has been a winding one.

Golsteyn, a captain at the time, was deployed to Afghanistan in 2010 with 3rd Special Forces Group. During the intense Battle of Marja, explosives planted on a booby-trapped door killed two Marines and wounded three others who were working with the major’s unit.

During those heated days, Golsteyn earned a Silver Star, the nation’s third-highest award for valor, when he helped track down a sniper targeting his troops, assisted a wounded Afghan soldier and helped coordinate multiple airstrikes.

He would be awarded that medal at a 2011 ceremony at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. The award was later approved for an upgrade to the Distinguished Service Cross, the second highest award for valor.

But both the medal and his coveted Special Forces tab would be stripped from him due to an investigation that eventually closed in 2014 without any charges.

An Army board of inquiry recommended a general discharge for Golsteyn and found no clear evidence the soldier violated the rules of engagement while deployed in 2010. This would have allowed Golsteyn to retain most of his retirement benefits under a recommended general discharge under honorable conditions.

Though he was cleared of a law of armed conflict violation, the board found Golsteyn’s conduct as unbecoming an officer.

Golsteyn was out of Special Forces and in a legal limbo as he awaited a discharge.

That could have been the end of it, but in mid-2015, Army documents surfaced, showing that Golsteyn allegedly told CIA interviewers during a polygraph test that he had killed an alleged Afghan bomb-maker and later conspired with others to destroy the body.

Those documents were part of a 2011 report filed by an Army investigator, Special Agent Zachary Jackson, who reported that Golsteyn said after the Marines were killed in the February blast that his unit found bomb-making materials nearby, detained the suspected bomb-maker and brought him back to their base.

A local tribal leader identified the man as a known Taliban bomb-maker. The accused learned of the leader’s identification, which caused the tribal leader to fear he would kill him and his family if released.

Trusting the leader and having also seen other detainees released, Golsteyn allegedly told CIA interviewers that he and another soldier took the alleged bomb-maker off base, shot him and buried his remains.

He also allegedly told the interviewers that on the night of the killing, he and two other soldiers dug up the body and burned it in a trash pit on base.

Stackhouse has previously called this alleged admission a “fantasy” that his client confessed to shooting an unarmed man.

Then, in late 2016, during an interview with Fox News, Golsteyn admitted to a version of the incidents involving the killing of the alleged Afghan bomb-maker.

The Army opened a second investigation near the end of 2016.

Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-California, himself a Marine veteran of both Iraq and Afghanistan, stepped in on Golsteyn’s behalf, writing a letter to the Army secretary and making scathing public comments about the case, calling the Army’s investigation “retaliatory and vindictive.”

The congressman called on Army leadership to “fix this stupidity,” describing Golsteyn as “a distinguished and well regarded Green Beret.”

Unrelated to the Golsteyn case, Hunter was indicted earlier this year by federal prosecutors who are alleging conspiracy, wire fraud, falsification of records and prohibited use of campaign contributions.

Democrats who are hoping that President Donald Trump will face harsh repercussions for paying settlements to women who allege relationships with him passed legislation on Thursday that requires them to make payments for sexual harassment with their own money.

Current law addressing sexual misconduct that was put in place in 1995 — ironically when Bill Clinton was in the White House — requires an accuser to get counseling, wait 30 days, and allowed accused lawmakers to use a slush fund of taxpayer money to pay off their accusers.

Part of the reason it took Congress all year to get this done is because the House wanted tougher punishments and more transparency when lawmakers sexually harass or discriminate against staff, while Senate Republicans, for some reason, insisted on watering down those provisions.

House lawmakers, for example, wanted to make members of Congress pay out of pocket for discrimination settlements too and wanted to provide legal representation to all accusers. But the Senate, which finally caved on requiring lawmakers to pay out of pocket for sexual harassment settlements, rejected both of those provisions and neither ended up in the final bill.

The passage of the bill, which President Donald Trump has to sign into law, is Congress’s response to the #MeToo movement launched last year, wherein women across the country accused men ranging from Hollywood moguls to media celebrities and members of the House and Senate of sexual harassment and worse.

Rep. Jackie Speier (D-CA) spearheaded the movement in Congress last year after announcing that she, too, had been the victim of sexual misconduct as a young congressional staffer. She was one of the main sponsors behind the House legislation, and she promised to push next session to put that chamber’s tougher terms back in place.

“Taxpayers should never foot the bill for Members’ misconduct,” Speier said in a statement provided to the Huffington Post. “And having spoken with many survivors, the process of going up against a lawyer for the institution and the harasser was as traumatic, if not more traumatic, than the abuse they suffered. … We are committed to offering victims the tools they need to pursue justice. We will address these issues in the next Congress.”

The law is not retroactive, so the members who have left their Congressional seats because of sexual misconduct charges will not be affected, including Blake Farenhold (R-TX), Patrick Meehan (R-PA), Trent Franks (R-AZ), John Conyers (D-MI), and Al Franken (D-MN).

The Daily Caller asked Speier why lawmakers paying off women who make accusations against them differs from what Trump is alleged to have done when his lawyer paid funds to women who claimed to have had a relationship with him.

“They’re totally unrelated,” Speier told The Daily Caller on Wednesday. She later explained, “One was to impact an election and the other was bad behavior within Congress.”

“When pressed further about the Congressional settlements being taxpayer money, as opposed to any money allegedly paid to Stormy Daniels through Michael Cohen, Speier responded, “I’m the one who has carried the legislation to make sure that members are held accountable. These members are now gone. There’s no one left who was sexually harassing.”

Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” the likely next chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) said President Donald Trump might “face the real prospect of jail time” in light of charges against his personal attorney, Michael Cohen for illegal payments during the 2016 presidential campaign.

Schiff said, “There’s a very real prospect that on the day Donald Trump leaves office, the Justice Department may indict him, that he may be the first president in quite some time to face the real prospect of jail time. We have been discussing the issue of pardons the president may offer to people or dangle in front of people. The bigger pardon question may come down the road, as the next president has to determine whether to pardon Donald Trump.”

The top Treasury Department employee who was charged Wednesday with leaking confidential financial documents pertaining to former Trump officials was apprehended the previous evening with a flash drive containing the allegedly pilfered information in her hand, prosecutors said in court papers.

The dramatic arrest late Tuesday came on the heels of other high-profile, leak-related prosecutions under the Trump administration, which has pledged to go on the offensive against leakers that the president has called “traitors and cowards.”

Natalie Mayflower Sours Edwards, 40, a senior official at the department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), is accused of illegally giving a reporter bank reports documenting several suspicious financial transactions, known as Suspicious Activity Reports (“SARs”), from October 2017 to the present.

Natalie Mayflower Sours Edwards, a senior official at the department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, also known as FinCEN, is accused of leaking several confidential suspicious activity reports to a journalist. (Alexandria Sheriff’s Office)

An unidentified, higher-ranking Treasury colleague was cited in court papers as a co-conspirator with Edwards, but was not charged. That person, identified only as an “associate director” at FinCEN to whom Edwards reported, exchanged more than 300 messages with a reporter via an encrypted messaging application.

Edwards saved thousands of SARs, “along with thousands of other files containing sensitive government information,” to a government-provided flash drive, prosecutors said. She transmitted the SARs to the reporter by “taking photographs of them and texting the photographs” using an encrypted application, according to charging documents, which said Edwards eventually confessed to doing so. FBI agents obtained a pen register and trap and trace order for Edwards’ cellphone during their investigation.

The files were allegedly saved to a folder on the flash drive with the file path “Debacle\Emails\Asshat.”

“Edwards is not known to be involved in any official FinCEN project or task bearing these file titles or code names,” federal authorities said.

The flash drive contained not only SARs, but also “highly sensitive material relating to Russia, Iran, and the terrorist group known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant,” prosecutors said.

During her interviews with FBI agents, Edwards initially denied any contact with the news media, and called herself a “whistleblower” who saved the SARs for “record-keeping,” according to the criminal complaint. Prosecutors said Edwards had previously filed an unrelated whistleblower complaint, and had been in touch with congressional staffers regarding that complaint.

The journalist’s name Edwards allegedly spoke with was not disclosed in court papers. But the documents list about a dozen stories published by Buzzfeed News over the past year-and-a half, including an article headlined, “GOP Operative Made ‘Suspicious’ Cash Withdrawals During Pursuit of Clinton Emails.” Another article was titled, “These 13 Wire Transfers Are A Focus of the FBI Probe Into Paul Manafort.”

The most recent Buzzfeed article cited in the charging documents was published on Monday.

“A review to date, pursuant to a judicially-authorized search warrant executed today, of Edwards’ personal cellphone has revealed that the cellphone contains the substance of many of these communications, including … communications in which Edwards transmitted or described” SARs to a reporter, FBI Special Agent Emily Eckstut wrote in an arrest warrant application submitted Tuesday.

“At the time she was questioned, Edwards was also in possession of a flash drive that appeared to be the same drive on which she saved the SARs,” Eckstut added. A spokesman for Buzzfeed declined to comment.

In a hearing Wednesday afternoon, federal magistrate judge Theresa Buchanan released Edwards, subject to the custody of her parents. She and her parents also signed a $100,000 bond as part of her release. Edwards, who appeared in court wearing street clothes, faces two charges (one for unlawful disclosure and one for conspiring to unlawfully disclose), each one carrying a maximum sentence of five years and a $250,000 fine. She is due back in court Nov. 2.

Edwards is currently on administrative leave at Treasury, FinCen spokesman Steve Hudak said.

Banks must file the suspicious activity reports with the Treasury Department when they spot transactions that raise questions about possible financial misconduct such as money laundering, but federal law strictly limits their disclosure.

“Today’s action demonstrates that those who fail to protect the integrity of government information will be rightfully held accountable.”

— FBI Assistant Director-in-Charge William F. Sweeney Jr.

Over the summer, senators flagged an apparent leaking problem at the Treasury Department that they said raised “serious” concerns. In a letter sent in June, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, requested that Treasury Department Inspector General Eric Thorson investigate the apparent leak of a confidential request for SARs that Senate investigators had made to the Treasury Department as part of their probe into election interference.

The Senate Judiciary Committee made the confidential request in a letter in September 2017, and the letter was described publicly in media reports the next month.

“If an official at the Treasury Department leaked the letter in an attempt to obstruct a Congressional investigation, that would be a serious matter,” Grassley wrote. “There is some indication this may be a recurring problem. While I do not know if there is any connection, I note that there have been other stories relying on Treasury officials who were unauthorized to speak to the media and detailing another Committee’s requests for SARs relating to its Russia investigation. I also understand that your office has opened an investigation into the apparent leak of SARs related to Michael Cohen to Michael Avenatti.”

Edwards has not been charged in that apparent leak, and there are no indications that she or her unidentified alleged co-conspirator at the Treasury Department were involved in it.

“In her position, Edwards was entrusted with sensitive government information. As we allege here today, Edwards violated that trust when she made several unauthorized disclosures to the media,” FBI Assistant Director-in-Charge William F. Sweeney Jr. said in a statement. “Today’s action demonstrates that those who fail to protect the integrity of government information will be rightfully held accountable for their behavior.”

Geoffrey Berman, the U.S. attorney in Manhattan, where the criminal complaint was filed, said Edwards “betrayed her position of trust by repeatedly disclosing highly sensitive information.” Edwards also sent the reporter internal Treasury Department emails, investigative memos and intelligence assessments, prosecutors allege.

According to court papers, federal investigators obtained a court order to monitor the calls to and from the cellphone of the unnamed associate director who allegedly conspired with Edwards. That monitoring captured the frequency of contacts with the reporter via the encrypted messaging application.

Court papers do not detail the contents of those messages. “Protecting sensitive information is one of our most critical responsibilities, and it is a role that we take very seriously,” said Sigal Mandelker, the Treasury Department’s undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence.

The prosecution is the latest in a series of leak-related prosecutions brought by the Trump administration, which has vowed to combat unauthorized disclosures. Earlier this year, President Trump said that “leakers are traitors and cowards,” and he vowed that “we will find out who they are!”

Donald J. Trump

✔@realDonaldTrump

The so-called leaks coming out of the White House are a massive over exaggeration put out by the Fake News Media in order to make us look as bad as possible. With that being said, leakers are traitors and cowards, and we will find out who they are!

Edwards’ arrest comes after a former security director for the Senate Intelligence Committee pleaded guilty to one count of giving a false statement to FBI agents looking into leaks of national security information to several reporters — including one now at the New York Times whom he dated before she joined the paper.

James Wolfe, who served as the Senate panel’s security director, lied to the FBI in December 2017 about contacts he had with three reporters, according to a statement of offense released Monday as part of his guilty plea. He also allegedly lied about giving two reporters non-public information about committee matters. His guilty plea on Monday to one count means that the other two counts against him will be dismissed.

And, just weeks ago, once-secret text messages revealed that anti-Trump ex-FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page had discussed a “media leak strategy” amid the Russia probe. Strzok and former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe were both fired for their conduct during that probe.

“I had literally just gone to find this phone to tell you I want to talk to you about media leak strategy with DOJ before you go,” Strzok texted Page on April 10, 2017, according to Meadows, who cited newly produced documents from the Justice Department.

Republicans have charged that the FBI provided misleading or inaccurate information to the FISA court to obtain the warrant. In particular, the FBI incorrectly suggested to the FISA court that a Yahoo News article provided an independent basis to monitor Page, when that article relied on the same source the FBI had cited earlier: ex-spy Christopher Steele, who worked for a firm hired by the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and the Hillary Clinton campaign.

Page on Monday announced he was suing the DNC and other entities for allegedly spreading false and defamatory reports about his supposed dealings with Russians.

“There have been so many lies, and look at the damage it did to our democratic systems and our institutions of government back in 2016,” Page told Fox News’ “Hannity” this week. “And I’m just trying to get some justice.”